Future of Life InstituteFuture of Life Institute

Mission Statement

To catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges. Read more

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Mission Statement

To catalyze and support research and initiatives for safeguarding life and developing optimistic visions of the future, including positive ways for humanity to steer its own course considering new technologies and challenges.

Description

We have technology to thank for all the ways in which today is better than the stone age, and technology is likely to keep improving at an accelerating pace. We are a charity and outreach organization working to ensure that tomorrow’s most powerful technologies are beneficial for humanity. With less powerful technologies such as fire, we learned to minimize risks largely by learning from mistakes. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and future strong artificial intelligence, planning ahead is a better strategy than learning from mistakes, so we support research and other efforts aimed at avoiding problems in the first place.

We are currently focusing on keeping artificial intelligence beneficial and we are also exploring ways of reducing risks from nuclear weapons and biotechnology. FLI is based in the Boston area, and welcomes the participation of scientists, students, philanthropists, and others nearby and around the world. Here is a video highlighting our activities from our first year.